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Paints prose portraits to remind fans of what today's cloistered stars won't share with them

Table of Contents

Foreword by William Nack     

Acknowledgments  

Introduction  

Part 1. Hundred-Yard Warriors

Chuck Bednarik: Concrete Charlie   

Walter Payton: The Poetry of Silence     

Terry Bradshaw: A Country Boy Can Survive

Bear Bryant: A Win, and a Coach, for All Time  

Dan Hampton: A World of Hurt 

John Matuszak: Me and the Tooz     

John Matuszak: The Other Side of the Story     

John Riggins: Runaway  

Dan Marino: A Kid Among Legends    

Joe Montana: Easy to Underestimate, Hard to Beat     

Gary Fencik: Boola! Boola!   

Part 2. Legends of the Box Score

Willie Mays: Out of the Past 

Stan Musial: The Man, Forever

Reggie Jackson: The Ego Is a Lonely Hunter     

Pete Rose: Pete Belongs in Cooperstown   

Nolan Ryan: On Second Thought

Johnny Bench: Old Too Young  

Earl Weaver: The Earl of Baltimore 

Gene Mauch: The Toughest Loss of All     

Dick Allen: More a Ghost Than a Legend   

Frank Robinson: Hard Game, Hard Man

Brooks Robinson: Honored To Be a Hero    

Ernie Banks: Mr. Cub Remembers     

Bill Veeck: "Bionic Man I'm Not"   

Carl Yastrzemski: Family Tradition 

Bill Lee: Spaceman     

Mark Fidrych: Bird with a Broken Wing    

Steve Bilko: The Slugging Seraph   

George Brett: Lipstick on a .407 Batting Average     

Willie Stargell: The Pirates' Patriarch  

Fernando Valenzuela: And a Rookie Shall Lead Them    

Jim Palmer: Good-bye Doesn't Come Easy   

Oscar Charleston: A One-Way Ticket to Obscurity

Part 3. Hoops and Horses and Everything in Between

Pete Maravich: The Pistol's Parting Shot 

Julius Erving: Sky King

Larry Bird: The Ultimate Celtic    

Big House Gaines: No Way to Treat a Legend     

Al McGuire: Sunday's Jester  

Ben Wilson: Only the Good Die Young

Wayne Gretzky: Borderline Case     

Jimmy Connors: Blue Collar at a Tea Dance

John Carlos: The Olympic Ideal     

Johnny Kelley: The Elder     

Ron Turcotte: Rider Down     

Buddy Delp: The Happy Anarchist    

Bill Shoemaker: A Million for the Shoe   

Part 4. Arts and Letters

Red Smith: The Write Stuff   

W. C. Heinz: The Professional

A. J. Liebling: Joe    

Mark Kram: Poet and Provocateur    

F. X. Toole: One Tough Baby  

Part 5. Sweet Scientists

Marvelous Marvin Hagler: The Proud Warrior     

Sugar Ray Robinson: He Gave Style a Name 

Joe Louis: Larger Than Life or Death     

Tony Zale: Raise Your Glass to a Teetotaler    

Paddy Flood: One of a Kind   

Sugar Ray Leonard: The One-Eyed Man

Ray Arcel: A Touch of Class  

Roberto Duran: A Man of Stone

Roberto Duran: He Cramped His Own Style  

Larry Holmes: His Time and No One Else's 

Muhammad Ali: No Garden Party

Muhammad Ali: Marching Off to Slaughter  

Muhammad Ali: Ali! Ali! Ali! 

Source Acknowledgments 

About the Author

John Schulian’s work has been included in Best American Sports Writing and Sports Illustrated’s Fifty Years of Great Writing. His many books include The John Lardner Reader and Twilight of the Long-Ball Gods: Dispatches from the Disappearing Heart of Baseball, both available in Bison Books editions. William Nack is the author of Secretariat: The Making of a Champion and Ruffian: A Racetrack Romance.

Reviews

"Mr. Schulian's most impressive quality, more admirable than his ear or knack for a phrase (his Nolan Ryan had a "heart like a blister"), is his generosity...Mr. Schulian made one generation of athletes worthy subjects of wonder. Had Hollywood not called, you suspect, he'd have done the same for another." Tim Marchman, Wall Street Journal "John Schulian ranks high among the best sports journalists of our time. His stories are clean and muscular and filled with swift, poetic turns... I've often wondered if the subjects of his stories realized how privileged they were to have him telling their tales. Great ballplayers come and go, but there has been only one Schulian." John Ed Bradley, author of It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium "This generous, big-hearted collection comes at a perfect time. Here is a reminder of what athletes were like before they were made virtual, hypothetical, or imagined or projected as probabilities in a fantasy game. They weren't always heroes. But Schulian made them all human." Mark Kriegel, author of Namath and Pistol "It's easy to forget how wonderful it is to be a sports fan. Remind yourself. Read this book." Joe Posnanski, author of The Soul of Baseball and The Machine